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01 June 2009

Ever since February 2005 Jane Lambert has provided 30 minutes of her time to up to 4 members of the public on the last day of every month absolutely fee of charge. She calls these advice sessions "clinics" and you can get some idea of what goes on at these sessions from the clinics website at www.nipc-clinics.co.uk or from her post "Tales of the Patent Clinic" on the IP Yorkshire blog. These clinics have proved very popular and Jane has responded to requests to open others elsewhere. She now has 8 of them in Barnsley, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Rotherham and York in Yorkshire and another at Bromborough in the Wirral.

That is as much as any one woman can manage and we have reluctantly had to turn down requests to extend that network until now. However, from 1 October NIPC clinics will go nationwide. Inventors or business people can fill in a form online or call one number which will enable us to identify the problem and identify who is best suited to help resolve it. We will then arrange for the client to meet a local professional well suited to assist him who may be a barrister, solicitor, patent attorney, trade mark attorney or a member of some other profession. The professional will give the client up to 30 minutes of his or her time absolutely free.

All the professionals in Yorkshire and the North-West who have participated in our programme have picked up work through the clinic. We are therefore about to recruit solicitors, patent and trade mark attorneys, accountants, business and other advisors throughout the country to assist us.